Dizkus

Ive been using PostNuke on my own site and for ISPs not long after the fork from PHPnuke. Its been a great but bumpy ride but without bumps any ride is rather boring.

I built a test portal at home for eventual deployment at work. I found out though that I couldnt deploy the system because it didnt conform to the web presence guidelines.

Specifically:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
U.S. Section 508 Guidelines

The tool used to validate sites before they are allowed to be enabled for public use is a program called Bobby.

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp

I would like to be able to use PostNuke where I work, but the way it is now, it cannot be deployed in any government agency that adheres to those Guidelines. All of NASA for sure, im not sure about the rest of the agencies.

Anyhow, i searched around for Bobby refs in the forums and didnt see any so maybe the PN devs were not aware of this, nor could be the theme developers. So if you could make PN conform to those guidelines I am sure I will not be the only one glad for it.

-Thanks!

Greg

http://forums.postnuke.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=10038

and I am sure there are more.

First though, this isnt a PN bash so lets avoid it. If you or someone you know cannot deploy their PN site due to Web Accesibility, or even will have to remove it soon for non-compliance, post on this link. Let the PN devs know there is such a need for this in the community and that by doing so will allow more sites to use PN.

Heck I wish i had the time to do it but my time at work is spent creating customer RedHat Linux server/workstation loads. So until i can contribute, i can ask reeeeaaallly nicely :)

Well I have the same problem at the college I work for. Our whole system must be 508 compliant by the end of the year. There are many state laws that are being passed to match the Federal laws that exist for accessibility. (* in the USA )

The problem is, that it's not so much the "engine" of post nuke that is the problem but the Themes. The majority of websites are not compliant because of images and the lack of Alt tags. Of course there are other issues with tables and forms, but with Bobby, the main thing that will cause the errors are the lack of alts.

This can be corrected, but it requires going into the themes, and providing alt tags or escaped alt tags on all image used in the theme. For non essential tags the alt="" will keep you in compliancy. I have made a post nuke website, altered the theme to include alts & used 3rd party modules, such as Content Express to make a Priority 1 compliant website. ( More or less 508 = W3C's Priority 1 level of accessiblity)

It would be nice however to have some of the accessibility features built in to PN. It is very time cosuming to make it accessibile but worth it in the end.

I too would be interested in knowing how many others are dealing with such issues.

I am now doing a project with the US Dept. of Justice and the site needs to be 508 compliant. And they do use Bobby to validate compliancy.

--zbert

This is an issue for me in the UK, not thru legislative demands, but just because I demand it! I love doing pnThemes with AutoTheme Lite and am concerned that PN is not accessible enough. One solution i have been remunating on is how to change the style sheets on the fly without a user account. If you theme properly with ya alt tags and can make a basic black and white, or similarly high contrast style sheet and theme, then swapping the style sheet and or the theme on the fly would be really useful.

One thing I thought of a few months ago was using the session register in the API or just plain ol cookies to store style sheet name and then swap the style sheet based on the cookie. The idea being that you have an instant makeover with instant visual accessibility. I am just not skilled enough [yet] to do this. I'd love to hear any other suggestions....

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one day at a time.....

How'd that turn out for you ? How else is 508 complient and how ?

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pnDev.com ~ featuring the PostNuke paid services forum

Well I have things working over here alright. But I have gotten no responses as if the compliancy is going to be considered.

What do you have working? What do you mean by ?

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pnDev.com ~ featuring the PostNuke paid services forum

I have a lot of the blicks working. Most of the admin menu is very well compliant. I have also added some java script for a few things such as time and the day. The only thing which I am concerned about is I plan to run a Paypal store and I would like to get a money converter on my page but PN's is in flash and Jaws does not read flash. Take a look at www.pilotalk.com and feel free to browse around. Now my site may not be the greatest as my hostmaster says for sighted enabled people but if you have ideas I would take them in to consideration.

for starters I'd change XHTML 1.0 Strict to Transitional, a quick test returned:
Result: Failed validation, 796 errors
Transitional won't save the day, but it would be a step forward [I think].

For lay-out, well, CSS and beauty of it is something you can argue about for hours, but maybe the use of margin and/or padding would be do some good, and styling the ul/ol lists.

You do have a very long left column, adding some center block text, or switching some blocks from the left to right, because now you have a very long page with little content on the left side.

Jaws doesn't indeed read Flash, so maybe using a PHP converter script could be handy.

- Igor



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Have a nice day

zikulapro.be is currently running
Zikula 1.0.2

Javascript isn't any good for screen readers either, from what I've read, so fancy javascript tricks with no fallback need to be avoided. PostNuke has fallbacks in .8 wherever javascript is used so it works perfectly well both with and without javascript. The same should be true of anything you use yourself.

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Regards,
Simon

itbegins.co.uk - Zikula Consulting

Please read the Support Guide

Igor,

How is XHTML 1.0 strict changed to transitional. I am not sure how to do this?

Hi Hammerhead,

I agree the problem though was finding something that would give the current time in a easy format to read. If you have another suggestion I would surely appreciate it. Also the java script giving the date though is not a problem with screen readers. I can use that properly.

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pnDev.com ~ featuring the PostNuke paid services forum

Could you explain that more with an example? I don't understand the [code] /[code] thing here. What would help me more is an example of code. I am assuming that these would go in to the HTML blocks? Also about the unordered lists by saying they need formatting I am assuming they need to go to the left right or center or be justified?